Splitting the bill

How to split a restaurant bill fairly

The bill arrives, someone picks it up, and the table goes quiet while everyone does arithmetic they cannot check. Splitting a restaurant bill is not hard maths. It is bookkeeping, done badly, at the end of a long evening, by people who have been drinking.

Here is what actually makes a split fair, worked through with real numbers, and what to do about the three parts that make it awkward: shared plates, tax, and the fact that one person always ends up putting their card down for everyone.

Two ways to split, and when each one is fair

Split equally

Add up the bill, divide by the number of people, done. It takes ten seconds and nobody has to remember who ordered the risotto.

This is the right answer more often than people admit. It is right when everyone ordered roughly the same thing, it is right when it is someone's birthday, and it is right any time the difference between the two methods is smaller than the goodwill you would spend arguing about it. If the gap is the price of a coffee, take the equal split.

Split per person

Everyone pays for what they ordered, with anything shared spread across the people who shared it.

This is the right answer when the spread is wide: one person on tap water and a salad, another on the steak and three beers. It is also right when the group is large enough that small differences compound, and when someone is claiming the evening on expenses and needs a number that is genuinely theirs.

There is one more argument for splitting per person, and it is the one worth stating plainly: an equal split is not neutral. It moves money from the people who order less to the people who order more, and it does it again every time the same group eats together. Once is generous. Every Friday is a standing arrangement that nobody at the table actually agreed to.

A worked example

Four people, one table, two plates in the middle. This is the bill the restaurant hands over.

Shared, in the middle

Bread and olives€8.00
Padrón peppers€7.50

Ana

Sea bass€24.00
Sparkling water€3.50

Ben

Ribeye€31.00
Beer€5.50
Beer€5.50

Cleo

Mushroom risotto€19.00
Glass of wine€7.00

Dev

Aubergine parmigiana€17.50
Soda€4.00

Total€132.50

Split equally, the four shares are €33.13, €33.13, €33.12, €33.12. Split per person, with the €15.50 of shared plates spread across the table, the same evening looks like this.

Diner	Own order	Share of the middle	Per person	Equal
Ana	€27.50	€3.88	€31.38	€33.13
Ben	€42.00	€3.88	€45.88	€33.13
Cleo	€26.00	€3.87	€29.87	€33.12
Dev	€21.50	€3.87	€25.37	€33.12

Ben pays €12.75 more than the equal split. Dev pays €7.75 less. On one dinner between friends that is roughly the price of a round, and probably not worth a conversation. On a dinner that repeats every week it is several hundred a year moving steadily in one direction, which is.

Shared plates are where splitting usually breaks

The bread, the olives, the peppers in the middle, the second bottle nobody ordered individually. Almost every method falls over here. A spreadsheet charges shared items to whoever typed them in. A bill-splitting calculator makes you pick one owner. The equal split solves it by pretending the entire bill was shared, which is only true of two plates out of twelve.

The rule is simpler than any of the tooling built around it: if it arrived in the middle of the table, split it across the table. If it arrived in front of someone, it is theirs.

Apply that to the example above and €15.50 of shared plates becomes €3.88, €3.88, €3.87, €3.87. Those are deliberately not all the same number. €15.50 does not divide by four, so somebody pays a cent more than somebody else. The tidier-looking alternative, rounding every share to the same figure, leaves the table over or short against a total the restaurant will not negotiate. Handing the remainder out one cent at a time is the only version where the parts add back up to the whole, and it is what TableTab does.

Tax and tips

If the menu price already includes tax, as it does across most of Europe, there is nothing to do. The split above is already right.

If tax is added at the end, apply it proportionally rather than as an equal share. Tax is a percentage of what was ordered, so it belongs to the person who ordered it. Splitting a bill carefully per person and then dividing the tax equally between everyone quietly undoes part of the split you just did, and it undoes it in the same direction every time: against whoever ordered least. TableTab asks the host for the rate once and applies it that way.

A percentage tip behaves the same way, because it is a percentage of the same thing. A flat "let's each throw in five" is a different, genuinely equal arrangement, and it is fine as long as somebody says it out loud rather than leaving it to be discovered in the total.

Nobody has to front the bill

The second half of the problem has nothing to do with arithmetic. One person puts a card down for the whole €132.50 and then spends the next fortnight sending messages that begin "sorry to be that person".

TableTab is never in the payment path. It works out who owes what, and then each person marks themselves settled: in cash at the table, or through whatever the host published, an IBAN, PayPal, Wise, bunq, or a Japanese bank account. There are no card details to enter, nothing is deducted from the total, and there is still no account for anyone to create.

That is a decision rather than a missing feature. Handling the money would mean taking a cut of every dinner or charging for the app, and it would mean asking a table of friends to hand their payment details to a website in order to solve something a bank transfer already solves. Showing the right number to the right person at the right moment is the part that was actually missing.

Doing it at the table

Start a table and share the link
One person opens TableTab and shares a link or QR code. Everyone else joins from their own phone. There is nothing to install and no account to create, for anyone.
Everyone orders from their own phone
What each person adds is what they will be charged for. The split is built while you order, rather than reconstructed from a receipt an hour later by someone squinting at handwriting.
Mark the middle of the table as shared
The bread and the peppers go across everyone. The ribeye goes to the person who ordered the ribeye. This is the step every other method gets wrong.
Pick equal or per person, and settle up
Everyone sees the same numbers on their own screen at the same time. Each person marks themselves paid, in cash or by whatever method the host published.

Try it on the next dinner

Start a table, share the link, and let the split build itself while everyone orders. Free, in the browser, nothing to install.

Start a table free

See how the whole evening works, from scanning the menu to settling up, or go back to the homepage.